Monday, August 30, 2010

Block 4: Week 1 - Pasta and Soup

Last week, we started Block 4, which is cooking dinner in the cafeteria. It's the same set up as the last couple of Blocks - groups of five rotating through four different stations: meat, fish, vegetables, and pasta. I'm actually in a group of five for the first time, and my group is pretty solid. We're in class at night, from 1:30 to around 7:00, so I get to sleep in finally. It's great.

We started off in the pasta and soup station. This station also makes a vegetarian entree. In the summer, dinner isn't very busy because there aren't too many students around, so we only need to prepare twelve to fifteen portions of whatever dish we're making. Not too hard.

We also have more lecture time than any previous Block. Chef likes to fill the boards up with writing before class, so I usually get there early to write everything down before lecture.

This week, I made a cream sauce to go with spinach tortellini garnished with green onions and chili flakes. The most interesting dish for me was zucchini pancakes served with tomato sauce, garnished with sour cream and brunoise yellow pepper. I also made rice pilaf, cream of corn soup, and creole soup.

Overall, this was a really fun week. Everyone's having a lot of fun, especially now that we're cooking a bit more. We also had some fun nights out after school. I was sad one day though - one of my friends was mad at me about a conversation he overheard and decided to ignore me for a while. Pretty immature.

This week, I also found out that I was student of the month for Block 3. Basically that means that I had the best mark in the class last month. The student who is student of the month the most times becomes student of the year and is eligible to enter a competition with other students of the year from different classes. It's been a different person each month so far, so no idea who is going to be student of the year at this point.